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User blog:Athena Hawkins/Hawkinzene ~ Top 10 Hardest or Painful Sonic the Hedgehog Levels
Hello everyone, welcome to the first official issue of Hawkinzene! Take a moment to brush the god-awful name to the side, and I'll tell you what this thing is all about. Hawkinzene is my way of displaying stuff I'm into or otherwise doing on the go, without spending too long describing my feelings on certain subjects. It is meant to distract me from my paranoia and anxiety and get to working on things that I'm passionate about. Hawkinzene will be used to improve my writing from an informative angle; something I'm not all too experienced with, but willing to improve in. Enough with the ado, though! This list will count down what I personally think are the hardest or most painful Sonic the Hedgehog levels out there. Though I've never played Lost World or Forces, I am confident enough in my writing ability to give out my personal thoughts on this subject, and am excited to get down to the number one spot. Let's dig in! Before you proceed Levels that come from overtly buggy games (e.g. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric) will be wholly discounted from this list, as will the optional missions of any level in the franchise (i.e. the Lost Chao missions from Sonic Adventure 2). #10 Cyber Track (Sonic Advance 3) Already veering off into handheld game territory, Cyber Track perfectly exemplifies the terrible design philosophy choices this game had. Random and unexpected death pits aren't the only things aglore here; anti-gravity will cruelly punish you for exploring your environment and fast-acting enemies will bully you into submission, too! The worst offender is the zone's third act, which gave it a place on this list: if you don't have a strong grip on the game's physics, you will truly suffer against the long, brutal platforming section awaiting you at the end! A friendly reminder that if you get a game over, you're sent all the way back to the title screen... not because you have to start the whole game over again, but because Dimps is remarkably incompetent. #9 Altitude Limit (Sonic Rush) I wouldn't say that Altitude Limit was as cheaply designed as Cyber Track, but it was yet another mindless hazardous slop. Bottomless pits decorated nearly every corner of the stage, the platforms at times were short and required you to navigate carefully, and some devilish bits near the end of Act 2 earned this stage a deserving spot on the list. Though I have managed to make it throughout this stage perfectly unharmed in recent years, that was solely the result of sweat and excessively hard work to overcome all the slow-paced challenges this stage randomly throws your direction. This isn't even a good stage by any means of sorts; half the course is just rail grinding and making blind leaps of faith thanks to the small DS screen sizes. Awesome. Does it surprise you that Sonic Rush was also made by Dimps? #8 Planet Wisp (Sonic Generations) Planet Wisp is where Generations went from being an excessively and unusually fun Sonic game to becoming a harsh, overbearing obstacle course. I can't necessarily say this stage was as poorly designed as either of the aforementioned Dimps courses, but some of the sudden difficulty curve did feel a little unjustified, even if it's this game's final level (sure don't look it, huh?). Both acts of the zone take an overly long time to simply cut through and are packed with enemies in questionable and perhaps even unfair positions, with the Wisp powerups being anything but fun to use and the whole zone being too gimmicky for its own good. Of the two versions, the Modern take is perhaps worse, with the hideous stage design in its second half perfectly explaining my disdain for the stage. If you fell in that section, you had to climb your way to the top again. It transitioned poorly from Colors, a terrible Sonic game. #7 Final Fortress (Sonic Heroes) Now we're talking about legitimately hard stages, as opposed to cheap messes. Final Fortress is the final stage in Sonic Heroes, and reasonably cranks the difficulty to the max. You must smash your way through the game's strongest mobs, including the improvised laser-wielding guardian robots and hammer-wielding monstrosities, while also evading laser shots from the battleship's cannons and switching from rail to rail. It is havoc-filled and compact with challenge upon challenge, especially if you're playing as Team Sonic or Team Dark. It is a scarily huge stage, taking roughly 10-12 minutes to finish for even seasoned players of the game, and checkpoints are highly scarce throughout. Though overly long and risking becoming samey near the end, the intense laser section near the end and upcoming fight against the epic Egg Emperor boss make it all worthwhile. An incredible final stage, by Sonic standards. #6 Death Egg's Eye (Sonic the Fighters) This is actually way less of a traditional stage, being more of a boss fight against Metal Sonic. But it should absolutely said- Metal Sonic is an absurdly challenging fighter that would top any tier list if he had the insane moveset, power and agility he displayed in this game. It is incredibly easy for Metal Sonic to slam the energy right out of your fighter and KO them within mere seconds if you weren't at the top of your game, attempting to predict his patterns and avoid his most scathing attacks. Some of his attacks can wipe out a full third of your health bar, if not over half of it all at once. This isn't just a one-match round, it's a best out of three, meaning that you have to win at least twice against Metal Sonic to reach your bonus final opponent: Dr. Robotnik himself. Fat chance you'll ever get to make it to Robotnik though, Metal Sonic will likely strike you with a series of quick game overs! #5 Lost Impact, Hero Mission (Shadow the Hedgehog) This stage just straight-up takes an eternity to complete. This stage is less of something actually difficult and more of an exercise in deep breathing. For the Hero Mission, you are required to defeat 35 "Artificial Chaos" enemies before you can progress, a mission that can take as little as nine minutes or unreasonably stretch out to take over 15. The actual stage itself is not that difficult initially, just keep your distance from the enemies and shoot away, but you have to constantly peek in and out of rooms on your search for them, being careful to not run so fast that you glitch through the floor! As you progress through the stage, you will be taking automated lifts from area to area, shooting down these enemies- some can come unreasonably close and become aggressive, possibly knocking you off of the platform. This can be a common mistake near the level's end, where arguably the nastiest of the species resides. If you're going for an A rank... godspeed, my friend. It took me 11 years. #4 Scrambled Egg Zone (Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)) Chances are, you've never heard of this zone. Scrambled Egg Zone is a terrifying task of trial and error, mostly from its unfair structure of transport tubes- you'll never know which one is wrong to enter until you worm your way into it, landing yourself on an unexpected bed of spikes! Sometimes, you'll just be thrown back out earlier on in the level, at least in Act 1. Enjoy blind leaps of faith and punishment towards first-time players! To be fair, players that have played through the zone plenty will begin to understand its pattern and find it easy, but trial and error is still not good level design, and I've had platforms disappear on me before where they really shouldn't have. The structure of the acts are so bizarrely difficult that its associated boss, Silver Sonic, is disappointingly easy to kill. It really didn't help that the Game Gear had a tiny-ass screen, making tacking your own movements quite hell at times. By far the most heinous 2D platforming Sonic stage. #3 Eggmanland (PS2/Wii Sonic Unleashed) Spoiler alert, I find this stage to be the toughest of all those found in Sonic's true platforming adventures- making the final two stages unique in nature. Eggmanland is a train wreck of a level from start to finish, including both the daytime and nighttime sections. The daytime segment is overtly long and riddled with Dimps-esque mistakes, like over-abundances of bottomless pit drops and incredibly precise platforming sections that don't seem to work in sync with Sonic's speed (especially while boosting). A mess of a variety of obstacles can be found here, from the Interceptor midboss to the on-rails sections to the insanely tricky platforming sections in both 2D and 3D. Overwhelming numbers of enemies and limited footing really make crossing this stage as just the hedgehog a hideously tough task on its own. But here's the kicker: you have to play 5 acts of this stage as the Werehog, all of which are sluggish to complete and take several minutes each to finish. What a hassle! And all of that for a disappointing duo of boss fights... Eggmanland is incredibly brutal, honestly- it hardly feels like a Sonic stage. It feels like a morbidly fast Battletoads stage, rather. But there's worse! #2 Sky Road (Sonic Riders) I have been neglecting talking about this stage for the longest time, and I think it's about time to let loose my rage for this godawful racetrack. Sky Road is an unorthodox, but perfect example of terribly strong A.I. rubberbanding. The A.I. racers on this track are immensely aggressive, always finding a way to catch up to you and steal your spot in the lead, never slowing down to let you catch up to them. There are several hard-to-reach shortcuts on this track, made by performing exceedingly difficult tricks and/or jumps, but the thing is that these A.I. racers have a very clear idea on how they work and will almost always shoot for them. You need to move so fast that you'll practically outspeed those taking the shortcut- a near impossible feat. Let's not forget that Sonic Riders forces you to stop at pit stops to refuel your hoverboard and also makes you essentially useless if you don't have any rings, limiting the power of your board. Unless you have a perfect grip on Sonic Riders, you will spend hours praying for mercy from your fellow enemy racers, who will never grant it to you as they speed around the bumps your energy-consuming board cannot. It really doesn't help that you're forced to play as Wave the Swallow for this course in story mode, whose type has a good disadvantage on this track- her shortcuts suck. Now, are you finally ready for number one? #1 The Showdown (Sonic Spinball) I doubt anyone really saw this one coming? Lemme just put it plainly: not only is this the harshest challenge I've ever had to put up with in the series itself, it is one of the most infuriating undertakings I've taken these past 20 years! The Showdown is the notorious final level from Sonic Spinball, its layout as insane as the mad egg himself. The game, already known for its sheer difficulty curve from Level 1 onwards, is tremendously tough to climb up- beginner players could take months to get her, or at least weeks if they're patient enough to keep playing and get a grip on the loose, overly speedy controls. The Showdown is a claustrophobic stage that assaults you both physically and mentally, with uncontrolled ball drops into the death-inducing lava pits cluttering the stage's bottom being common and the stage's five emeralds being hidden in some of the trickiest spots to reach of all. One mess-up can potentially lead to your death- at most, you will possibly have two or three lives, so it is completely necessary to never let your guard down here. This stage is about as annoying as it is downright infuriating, with Sonic often dropping back down to the stage's dangerous lows from the shakily navigated upper areas and being thrown out of Robotnik's arena constantly. I cannot blame anyone that's thrown their controller or otherwise given up at this area; even with save states, this stage has given me so much bullcrap. This stage is much harder than anything previously mentioned on this list. Sky Road is beatable if you're very skilled with Sonic Riders' gameplay, and you don't reset from the beginning of the game if you fail it. Sonic Unleashed can let you accumulate a ton of points early on as you arrive towards Eggmanland, letting you take advantage of its many checkpoints. You may restart the Metal Sonic fight as many times as you wish, and you will always reset from Egg Fleet for Sonic Heroes. But this stage will force you to play the crushing levels that precede even this one, especially the Machine, if you fail it enough. You better have stocked on extra balls; you're going to need them in more ways than just one. Conclusion Basically, Dimps sucks. Did you agree or disagree with my list? Did you find it at least fascinating? 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